


Excuse Me While I Spell My Name

by TheAlderKing



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Derek Has a Crush, Future Fic, M/M, Not Beta Read, POV Derek Hale, POV Sheriff Stilinski, Polish Stiles Stilinski, Pre-Slash, Stiles' name, Stilinski Family Feels, all your faves are still alive, stiles as derek's anchor vaguely implied, they just don't appear in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-26 14:35:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3854302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAlderKing/pseuds/TheAlderKing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You’ve got white-out on your diploma. You actually defaced your diploma to keep people from seeing your name?”</p><p>“Mmm, couldn’t let the secret out after so many years of keeping it.”</p><p>How Stiles got his names.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Excuse Me While I Spell My Name

**Author's Note:**

> First posted fic ever! Please correct me if I get anything wrong! I've only watched two episodes of this show!
> 
> Title is from Talk Talk's Today, which has nothing to do with this story and is aggressive 80's gay bar music.

He never exactly fell out with his parents, but they were never close. His childhood had been a lonely and uncomfortable mix of walking on eggshells and fending for himself. When he moved out—right out of high school—he’d given them his telephone number, but they’d never called, _he’d_ never called, and, well…

He changed his name soon after that, moved, and knew that “John Stilinski” was a hell of a lot harder to find than “Maciej Stilinski,” but he didn’t fret much about that.

He swore on his life and all of the memories of taunting in school that he’d give whatever future kids he had the most boring and incorruptible names possible. 

 

When he met Claudia at the only Polish Catholic church in the area, with her wild hair and her eyes the absolute color of tea, he wasn’t expecting to gain a father almost immediately. 

Her dad was an enigma unlike any John had ever encountered. He welcomed him in without question, heaping the same affection on him as he did his own precious daughter, claiming that she knew how to pick ‘em more than he ever could. 

Biggie Grzejdziak was sharp, dark-eyed, and quick—all sinew and elbows, and ruthless with teasing, but always sensitive and thoughtful. 

John would maintain to this day that Biggie is the only reason he knew how to be a dad at all, and laments the fact that Stiles missed meeting him nearly every day.

 

After a very short month of mourning and a very long twenty-three hours of labor, memorializing Claudia’s dad seemed like a good idea. The thought left him wet-eyed and quiet and dissolved the oath he’d made to himself when he’d changed his own name.

And so came into the world Zbigniew Grzejdziak Stilinski. Oh, God it was so much worse than “Maciej.”

The man who had brought his son (his son!) back into the room was some kind of surfer dude who apparently got lost on the way to catch a gnarly tube and ended up a neonatal nurse in San Jose. He took one look at the name on the chart and gave up, proclaiming, “You know what, little buddy dude, I’m just gonna call you Stiles. That’s right babystiiiileees.”

The nurse was a friendly sort, so neither he nor Claudia chose to correct him, though the wry looks Claud kept shooting him at every mention of ‘Stiiiiles’ made him want to either crack up or start crying again for how full his heart felt.

 

They had gone home from the hospital with every intention of calling him Evan, but as the weeks went on, it fit less and less. Poor kid had colic, and one night, in a fit of exhausted delirium, John had tried to reason with the baby in an impression of the nurse.

“Stiiillleesss, dude. You gotta stop cryin’ and sleep, man! You’re makin’ your parentals insaaane!” It was a stupid joke, and didn’t help the crying in the least, but Claudia had laughed enough to give herself painful hiccups, and after weeks of stress and little sleep, John counted it as a win. 

It became a sort of thing between them, mimicking the surfer nurse while bouncing the fussy baby around the house. After a while, the joke sort of fell away, and with each repetition, they used the name more earnestly. It was a special name for a special kid. So it stuck.

________________

It was another day sitting in Stiles’ bedroom. It was August, and Stiles was only a year away from obtaining his archival studies degree. Derek ended up here without thinking most days, though his excuses for loitering in the Stilinski home had dried up some years ago. 

Unfortunately, Stiles had busied himself with transcribing nearly illegible PDFs of old tomes sent to him by a research librarian contact he had in Massachusetts. He was hell-bent on perfecting a searchable database of spooky shit, and he wouldn’t let his last summer vacation or visitors get in the way of that. So Derek was bored.

The room was emptier since Stiles left for college—more impersonal. A few additions had been made, though, including a framed picture of the group at their high school graduation and his diploma… which...

“You’ve got white-out on your diploma. You actually defaced your diploma to keep people from seeing your name?”

“Mmm, couldn’t let the secret out after so many years of keeping it.”

Derek dropped onto Stiles’ bed with the picture frame, recalling the pack’s high school graduation three years prior. The teacher announcing the graduates had stumbled upon reaching his name, given up, and simply called out “Stiles Stilinski.” Derek would privately admit to being a little disappointed in not getting to hear it… scratch that—he would _never_ admit it, but his curiosity was killing him. Stiles cultivated the mystery surrounding his first name like a favored houseplant. He’d even put glamour wards on his wallet to scramble the writing on his ID in case of lupine pickpockets.

“What _is_ your name?”

“Nope. No. No way. We’ve been over this. Only Scott knows that, and he doesn’t even know how it’s spelled. I didn’t even tell him. He was just around enough when I got in full-name trouble.”

“It can’t be _that_ embarrassing.”

“One: you know nothing. Two: stop distracting me.”

“Whatever. I can probably get Danny to hack into your bank records or something.”

“Nah. Me and Danny’ve had an unspoken pact since first grade. An understanding that can only be experienced between two youths in public school with non-Anglo American names. We’re comrades. He wouldn’t betray me for you.”

Stiles went back to work, or more accurately, went back to ignoring Derek glaring at the back of his head. 

“I’ll teach you how to get Scott drunk.”

As absorbed with his work as Stiles had seemed, that got him to spin around and turn his laser-focus on Derek. Derek shivered, feeling electric the way he always did when he had Stiles’ full attention.

“That… can be done?” 

“Yep.” He had been sitting on the family recipe until the youngest of them turned twenty-one, just to be an ass, but he would gladly trade a passive aggressive gesture for this satisfaction. Besides, Boyd’s birthday was only about a month away, and Derek’d get his laughs when they realized that shit was only really palatable in eggnog and that it stained your mouth black.

Stiles beat a short rhythm on his desk, one side of his jaw ticking and his eyes narrowing in consideration. He appeared to come to a decision and quick-turned to a blank page in a notebook, scratching something out in highlighter. In one motion he tore out the paper, balled it up, and threw it at Derek. Derek caught it just before it hit him in the chest, eyebrows raising in mild surprise.

“You’ll never be able to pronounce it anyway, but breathe a word and I will poison the shit out of you.” Stiles spun back around and continued typing as though he had never stopped. “Scott owes me _so much._ ” 

Derek carefully unfurled the ball, cocking an eyebrow at ‘ZBIGNIEW’ written hastily without regards for the lines on the paper.

“Are you joking? This just looks like you wrote out a keyboard smash.”

“Go eat a whole bag of salty, unwashed dicks, Hale.”

That startled a cough of a laugh out of him. “Ew.” 

Derek could practically hear Stiles’ grin. Something twisted in his gut, not unpleasantly.

“It’s Polish.”

“Yeah, what’s it mean?”

Still typing, Stiles replied, “To dispel anger.”

Derek’s breath caught in his throat. Did Stiles know--? Was he just screwing with him? No, there was nothing in his voice that betrayed anything other than distracted annoyance. Fucking coincidences.

Derek recovered and snorted. “Only an asshole like you would have a verb for their first name.”

“Shut up ‘people-ruler.’ ”

Derek tried to scowl, but it was too much work, and Stiles’ back was to him anyway. He folded up the paper carefully and tucked it into his pocket for safekeeping.


End file.
